If you don’t believe me, check out the work I’ve done for one of my courses, Dynamic Persuasion Design:

Project 1 – Consensus | Project 2 – Tile | Project 3 – evilprinter.com

I’ve added a number of new skills to my repertoire. All three of those projects are in ActionScript 3.0. All of them use PHP/MySQL extensively to aid in content management. And the last two employ the Flash Media Server, either to broadcast messages between clients, or to stream video from a webcam. Not too shabby.

- Joe

http://testing.jp-design.net/tests/ 

It works best with two web browsers or many people. Give me some user-generated-content!

Tile Comps

Tile is a square-tile based photo-mosaic app. The homepage will have an extremely wide view of the canvas area, so wide that an individual image will only take up one solitary pixel.  Clicking on the wide view causes the screen to zoom to a reasonable viewing distance.

Users will be able to upload new photos, and reorder existing ones. This will be somewhat of a self-organizing site in the sense that we won’t be able to tell exactly what it will look like at any given time. Below is a half-working example of the re-ordering interaction.

I have newfound appreciation for the algorithms that must take place during a disk defragmentation.

First is what you might see as a pre-loader when first visiting the site. Second is what the homepage would look like, the tiles each representing a different poll of opinion. Last is what a poll would look like, after clicking on one of the tiles from the previous image.

There are three “characters” on top of each other. Click one of them to enable movement with the arrow keys. It still needs a little tweaking, and certainly real graphics (rather than the stand-in black boxes (hence the name)), but all in all, I’m satisfied with it.The code behind it is relatively simple. I went online and found the equilibrium formula for levers:

Mass x Distance left of Fulcrum = Mass x Distance right of Fulcrum

Extending that for multiple objects, I can take the sum of those terms and average it (divide by the number of terms times the length of the lever arm), then multiply that by the range of motion of the lever. The result is the base rotation for the lever:

lever_mc.rotation = ((M1 x D1 ) + (M2 x D2) + (M3 x D3))/(3 x 211.5) * 30;

In response to the ENTER_FRAME event, I added a sine function to the base rotation to get that pleasant rocking effect:

lever_mc.rotation += Math.sin(count/20)*2;

If you haven’t guessed by now, I love math just about as much as I love programming. Knowing enough of both to combine the two together allows for really neat results. Good night, world.
- Joe

User polls and voting have been around for some time. My proposition for project 1, entitled Consensus, is a “Web 2.0″ user poll.

Polls will be displayed as a statement, and a see-saw. The sides of the see-saw will be labeled yes/no or right/wrong — whatever is conducive to the question.

A person visiting the site will start out with the ability to view all polls. Registering a username will allow the user to create an avatar, distinguishable by a user-selectable color, and participate in the polls. To participate, the user will place his avatar on the see-saw relative to his stance on the subject. He will also have the option to leave a comment explaining his opinion. All registered users viewing a given poll concurrently will be able to chat with each other to discuss (and probably argue about) the topic. Mousing over avatars on the see-saw will display users’ explanations (if given).

Polls will be only be opened for a limited time. During this time, users will have a chance to invite like-minded friends to sway the balance in their favor. When the time expires, the poll goes to archive mode, the results are viewable, but no further modification is allowed. Being on the winning side grants the user some food, which will increase his weight, making his effect on further polls stronger relative to slimmer users. Users will lose weight when creating a poll, thus dampening over-posting.

I’d eventually like to implement a “lightning poll” option, available when more than 10 users are logged into the site concurrently. When a lightning poll topic is created, users will scramble to get 1 of 8 spots in the poll. A timer begins, and users have to decide and convince the others which opinion is correct. When the timer runs out, users get food accordingly, and the pattern continues.

The strengths of this concept lie in the interaction between users, the urge to voice an opinion, and the ability the user has to participate in the site even if no other users are actively logged in. Altogether, I see this as a very compelling idea, and one that I’m anxious to explore over the course of this project.

- Joe